Fitz Toussaint leads Michigan running backs by example after doing the opposite last year

View full sizeMichigan senior Fitz Toussaint has been identified as a leader by his fellow running backs.Courtney Sacco | AnnArbor.com

ANN ARBOR -- Fitzgerald Toussaint’s struggles, both on the field and off, were well documented last year.

Instead of answering questions about how Toussaint would follow up the first 1,000-plus yard rushing season since 2007, coaches were asked how they would handle disciplining the running back following an arrest for drunk driving.

Toussaint’s season turned out to be as disappointing as the choices he made preceding it. He rushed for 514 yards, less than half of his 2011 total, and a bad year had the worst possible ending when he broke his leg against Iowa.

With all that happened in 2012, Toussaint might have seemed like an unlikely candidate for a senior leader in 2013, but he’s emerged as exactly that according to his peers.

“He’s like, a captain of the group,” said redshirt freshman running back Drake Johnson. “I might mess up one day and Fitz, being the senior back, he’s like our rock, he like holds us all together. He’ll be like ‘Drake, you know next time you might want to do this.’”

“One thing about us, as a unit, is we look up to the old guys. The guys who have been through the struggles, that have fought through adversity, and have been through a lot of things and one of them is Fitzgerald Toussaint,” said junior running back Thomas Rawls. “Fitz is an amazing leader, captain, and a guy who pushes us.”

That hasn’t always been the case.

With all that went on off the field last year, running backs coach Fred Jackson said Toussaint didn’t have a leg to stand on from a leadership standpoint, and Jackson challenged him to lead by example.

“Let me tell you what I told him, I said ‘Fitz, you can’t tell nobody nothing last year. The things you did off the field took away your leadership ability,’” Jackson said.

After fighting through his injury and staying out of trouble off the field, Jackson said Toussaint put himself in position to lead.

“I said ‘now you put yourself in a position to lead this team and I expect you to be a leader’ and I said ‘show me. I don’t want to ask nobody if you’re leading I want to see that you’re leading,’” Jackson said . “I don’t mean yelling and screaming and acting like a leader, I said ‘show me that you’re a leader.’”

According to his fellow backs, one place Toussaint is doing exactly that is the film room.

“He knows the entire offense like the back of his hand, so we’ll be like ‘what do you think about this’ and he’ll say, ‘you should have done this,’” Johnson said.

Jackson said Touissant being a student of the game is a new and welcome development.

“Fitz knows the offense. Fitz didn’t really know it as much as you would like to have your guy know it a year ago,” Jackson said. "Fitz right now can call all the blitzes all the protections all the checks and if a young guy don’t know it, he can say, ‘hey this is what you do there.’”

Toussaint said Brandon Minor and Carlos Brown were mentors to him when he was first getting acclimated to college football, and after a tough junior year – on and off the field – he feels like he’s ready to be that guy for the next group of Michigan running backs.

“I remember being a freshman and the older guys doing the same thing with me,” Toussaint said. “I just wanted to carry that over to when I’m a senior and I’m a senior now.”